Bad days for Armed Forces

Col R Hariharan

Britain has just announced massive cuts in the armed forces. Britain spends $ 38 billion dollars a year on defence; does it need such a luxury when Rule Britannia has been reduced to history books? This is the moot point the nation is trying to answer. The woes of the British military, which once ensured "the Empire on which the sun never sets," appear endless. A Ministry of Defence’s survey of 10,500 Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel carried out in 2009 was revealing. Most of them were suffering from low morale and major concerns over the military equipment they used on the frontline in Afghanistan.

Gen Richard Dannat, Chief of General Staff, went public about the state of his troops fighting in Afghanistan. He spoke of poor pay and acute shortages of essential equipment including helicopters for soldiers in operation. Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not take it kindly; his government denied the outspoken General the appointment of the Chief of Defence Staff. The latest job cuts in defence particularly in the Royal Airforce are not going to go down well. And the Royal Navy's legendary aircraft carriers will be starving without aircraft.

But it is not only in Britain the armed forces are going to be unhappy. In general, these are not happy days for armies in the Western world. Already British and French armies are smaller than ever before. Their influence on national policy making is waning as the scope and content of national security is growing well beyond physical security. The process is not uniform and varies with historical military traditions and ethos of different nations.

On one extreme we have Turkey, a later day convert to democracy where the army had been the self appointed of guardian of secularism. In the past, whenever its primacy was threatened, the army came down hard on civilian rulers. But Ankara is fast changing now. A referendum held in September has voted for constitutional reforms to curtail the powers of the military. The package of reforms put up by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) aims at making the armed forces more accountable to civil courts. This is happening in spite of the army’s well founded suspicion that the AKP is a fellow traveller of Islamic fundamentalists.

At the other end we have countries like Sweden and Norway with armies populated large by short-term compulsory service cadres with only a sprinkling of career soldiers. In the West, as memories of the Cold War fade, most of the armies are leading a hand to mouth existence. As an analyst said the military is now seen in Europe more as an employment programme to keep the number of jobless down, than to maintain military power.While a unified EU force may still be distant dream, many member states are cutting down their force levels.

Involvement of European armies in the conflict in Afghanistan has exposed serious shortages in weaponry and equipment. Many of the ISAF armies found problems of replacement and maintenance dogging them. For instance though both Britain and France claim their armies are technically on par with the U.S., true strength of armies comes from their power to hold on to their dominance on ground and protect it from threats in land, air and sea. And this is what they lack. Strapped military budgets are blunting their sharp edges. French military pride fostered from the days of Napoleon’s Grand Armèe seems to be wearing thin as it has become expensive to maintain a well equipped, fighting fit army. To overcome the problems of funding, President Sarkozy had proposed a unified European military or a well equipped intervention force. British military chiefs were also exploring closer links with the French.

Frederick the Great said “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” In the coming years Europe would probably be playing its muted diplomatic tunes with only chamber orchestras of armies.

The story was no better with the Russian armed forces till President Putin pulled them out of the morass of low esteem and shortages. In the U.S., the role of military that went up during President George W Bush’s tenure is now being pruned by his successor Barack Obama. In keeping with election promise to pull back troops from Afghanistan, Obama’s national strategic policy 2010 talks of giving diplomacy, rather than the military, a larger role in the U.S.’s global power projection. The President substantiated this by sacking General McChrystal, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, when the General made public his differences with Washington’s war strategy.

In South Asia most of the countries have used their armies as tools for sustaining governments characterised by poor governance and political corruption. These armies with their colonial baggage had been useful in crushing extremism and insurgencies. The Indian National Congress came to power after its non-violent struggle for freedom under Gandhiji’s leadership succeeded. This has probably coloured the early Indian perception on the role of the army as watchdog of the rulers rather than guardian of national security.

Perhaps, there was also a suspicion about former colonial army’s readiness to function under an elected civilian government. This is probably what prompted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to write a letter to General Lockhart, commander in chief, two days before India became independent. He wrote: “In any policy that is to be pursued, in the Army or otherwise, the views of the Government of India and the policy they lay down must prevail. If any person is unable to lay down that policy, he has no place in the Indian Army or in the Indian structure of Government.” While the armed forces have been following this dictum, successive governments failed to lay down policies not only on national security but also on a host of issues related to security forces and their competency.

The progressive downgrading of armed forces officers in the bureaucratic barometer of order of precedence reflects this mindset. The roller coaster downslide has now put the army chief is on par with the chairman of the Union Public Service Commission. This is more than symbolic.

Even in defence policy making. India is perhaps one country where service chiefs are only on listening watch. This is in spite of using the armed forces continuously for six decades in both external and internal wars of many hues. Even now India’s National Security Council (modelled on its U.S counterpart) presided over by the Prime Minister has besides the National Security Advisor, the ministers of Defence, External Affairs, Home, and Finance of the Union government and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission as members. Contrast this with President Obama’s National Security Council which has the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a statutory attendee.

So it is not surprising that even issues concerning the combat readiness of the armed forces stagnate for want of timely decision making. It has become routine to recast the recommendations of successive pay commissions (with only civil bureaucrats as members) on armed forces pay and allowances after the service chiefs complain about them. Veterans have been treated shabbily and we see them taking to the streets, returning their medals and burning their artificial limbs to remind the government of unfulfilled promises.

Recently the Supreme Court which sought an independent pay tribunal exclusively for the armed forces, flew into a rage over the “insensitive bureaucracy” at the Centre that was throwing a spanner into the proposal, citing financial constraints. A Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and TS Thakur said,“Sitting somewhere in a plush office in Delhi and finding faults in each proposal is easy. This Defence Secretary must be sent for 10 days to these high altitudes… At least see the conditions in which these people serve.” As the media reports said the judges were critical of the bureaucracy’s apathy towards the armed forces. The Bench noted, “If this was a proposal for the bureaucrats, it would soon be implemented. We don’t expect the bureaucracy to support this proposal…We need to deal with them (armed forces) separately as a distinct class.”

In spite of all this, the armed forces strive hard to meet the near impossible expectations of the rulers and people. People forget that soldiers come from the same society in which corruption, absence of rule of law and human rights violations have become endemic. Twelve months of military training alone cannot completely change the mindset of soldiers coming from rural societies steeped in caste prejudices and politics and human rights violations. Unless there is social change we cannot expect the armed forces to be insulated forever from the pernicious influences.

Added to this is the problem of employing army in counter insurgency operations. In such situations armed forces have become the whipping boys for national maladies mostly because it is convenient. Those who criticise the army of high handedness forget that since 1990 as many as 1,473 of 1,511 cases of human rights violation or abuse levelled against security forces personnel have been proved false after investigation. Traditionally military leaders maintain a low profile unlike politicians or the intellectual class. If the service chiefs comment on vital issues affecting their professional competency or national security, the bureaucracy and politicians get restive and media frowns.

Take the case of New Delhi’s the latest discovery that Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and not inept governance or bankrupt policies, was at the root of the unrest in Srinagar valley. So the government seriously considered the repeal of the Act in parts of unrest in Kashmir to improve the situation. But appears to have taken a more sensible approach to it. But the sad thing is not one political leader of the ruling class had the moral courage to condemn terrorists and political leaders inciting the riotous mobs to carry out intifida – a form of indirect warfare. In the remaining cases 104 personnel were punished. It is easy for policy makers to forget that between 1988 and the first seven months of 2010, 5962 security personnel have lost their lives in Kashmir. But how can the soldiers forget?

So it is no wonder that Indian armed forces are no more a popular career option. I suppose politicians can take consolation that this is the trend world over. With the technology boom triggering growth, better class of people are reluctant to bear the hardship of serving in the Indian army deployed in difficult areas. Huge shortages in officers are affecting the operational capability and overload the officer class which is always expected to "do or die" regardless of problems. This sums up India's military prepardness as we read everyday of new threats in many dimensions developing in South Asian environment.

(The writer is a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, and associated with the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai Centre for China Studies.)